Walgreens has quietly stripped its hourly employees of paid vacation time for major holidays including Christmas and Thanksgiving after being bought out by a private equity firm, according to reports.
The move will reportedly affect Christmas Day, Thanksgiving, New Year’s Eve, Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and Labor Day, which full-time employees previously got paid for even if they worked no hours that day.
It comes after the struggling pharmacy chain was acquired for $10m in August by the private equity firm Sycamore Partners, ending its nearly century-long run as a publicly traded company.
Since then Sycamore has continued Walgreens’ aggressive cost-cutting drive, reportedly firing around 80 corporate employees, including most of its communications team, and closing an office in downtown Chicago.
That was on top of roughly 1,200 store closures that Walgreens announced in 2024, part of a massive wave of corporate retail layoffs that has helped drive the U.S. monthly hiring rate to its lowest point since the pandemic.
Federal law does not require companies to pay their employees for public holidays they don’t work.
The Pharmacy Guild, a labor union for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians, condemned the move, saying it would force some employees to choose between paying their bills and having enough to eat.
“I don’t think a health care worker anywhere in this country, regardless of what their title is, deserves to live like that,” co-founder Shane Jerominski told Bloomberg.
Walgreens and Sycamore Partners did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Founded in 1901 and floated on public stock markets in 1927, Walgreens has been struggling for years with inflation, rising costs, thin prescription reimbursements, and shoplifting, as cash-strapped consumers turned increasingly to online shopping in the wake of the pandemic.
By October 2024, the company’s stock price had plummeted by as much as 92 per cent from its all-time peak in 2015.
Sycamore’s move will only inflame ongoing controversy about the economic dominion of private equity firms, which critics accuse of degrading Americans’ quality of life by buying up longstanding businesses and milking them for short-term profit.